


The Last Dragon's Son

by AugustStories



Series: Game of Thrones Season 8 Oneshots [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Jaime and Jon talk, Jaime finds out a truth, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Post-Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, Season/Series 08 Spoilers, aftermath of the Long Night, hence death all around, highly doubt this will ever in any form be canon, or even canon related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 14:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18693115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AugustStories/pseuds/AugustStories
Summary: In the aftermath of the Long Night, Jaime finds himself confronted with the truth about the Warden in the North and has his world view spun on its axis again.





	The Last Dragon's Son

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phosphorescent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phosphorescent/gifts).



> I am still entirely shocked that Jaime has survived. I was not expecting that but I am only so much happier for it.
> 
> I wrote this scene because it's a conversation I would love to see, a moment between these two characters I would love to have but don't expect to get. On the show, contrary to the books, Jaime is the last person alive as far as we know who actually knew Rhaegar Targaryen as more than what the stories painted him as.

When the sun was high up in the sky, Jaime found himself standing in the courtyard of Winterfell, still numb and still not fully understanding that he had actually made it.

He lived.

He had lived to see another dawn.

And now, surviving the fight meant clean up, it meant burning the dead because they couldn't even think about proper burials with so many bodies. The risk for diseases was too big, they had to act quick and unceremonnial.

Jaime helped where he could, building pyres out of rubbel, carrying the dead to them, helping to shift through the destroyed castle parts to find more bodies. He worked and moved and worked, because he might be numb right now but he knew the second he stopped it would all crash down on him. This bubble in his head would burst and he would realize what had happened last night, how much they had lost and how close it had been, and he wasn't ready for it.

Not yet.

Not when there was still room for distraction.

He didn't know the full scale of who had survived the battle and who hadn't, hells, he barely knew more than a handfull of people in this place anyway. He knew Brienne and Podrick were on the list of survivors, they had been right with him in the end. He had briefly seen his brother already, hugged him and then they had gone their ways again, they had time for words later.

He knew the Starks had survived, Jon Snow had held his sisters in the Great Hall when Jaime and Brienne had gone looking for them, Bran had sat in the back, unharmed, calm as ever. He hadn't seen the Dragon Queen since the midst of the battle but word was that she lived.

So did both dragons and the direwolf.

All three creatures were integral in the morning hours as the light illuminated the chaos and the devastation. The dragons, tired and exhausted, still set pyres aflame and burned the mangled bodies of the former wights. The wolf, still not white again, helped in discovering more bodies in the ruins of Winterfell's destroyed parts.

It was a victory but it was also a loss.

They would make it out of this, Jaime just didn't know how yet.

He dragged a hand over his face, grimaced at the dried blood and the dirt, gave himself a short moment of catching his breath before he moved on again. Hours of work and it was still so much to do, so he went on, picked up the next lifeless body and carried it over to where they had built up the next pyre.

There was smoke in the air and Jaime had to push back memories and nightmares, today fire meant a good thing, today fire was a sign of their survival.

Still, when the people had looked at Jon Snow in the direct aftermath of the battle, no sign yet of Daenerys Targaryen, and has asked him what to do with the dead, Jon Snow had spoken just three words and Jaime had been seven and ten again.

"Burn them all."

Jaime had flinched away and taken a moment behind a wall to compose himself again, raw and exhausted as he was, just days after he had seen The Mad King in Aerys' daughter's eyes, it was just too difficult to hold back the flashes of times long gone. Brienne had stood with him, her hand on his elbow but quiet, a silent pillar of strength until Jaime had breathed himself through a panic attack.

Jon Snow hadn't left the work to others, he was right among them and Jaime found himself crossing path with the Warden of the North again and again, especially once Daenerys Targaryen had been found and brought back to the castle. An act that prompted Jon Snow to avoid the interior and stick to carrying bodies as well, followed by his white shadow and the eyes of a green dragon.

The latter was something Jaime pondered over as he set another body onto the pyre and then stepped back to let said dragon light it up. He hadn't thought a lot about seeing the former King in the North riding the smaller of the Queen's dragons, a strategic advantage to have two dragonriders, reasons hadn't mattered when death had been so imminent.

Now though, now he had time to think about it because it meant not thinking about what had actually happened. 

It was obvious and clear that it hadn't just been luck that had kept Jon Snow on the green dragon, not when it was sticking close to him even now, almost as clingy as the white direwolf who had been at his master's side for years by now. There was a bond and it made absolutely no sense to Jaime at all.

Having spent as much time as he had with Targaryens and a brother who had loved dragon books more than people for the longest time, he knew that no one without Targaryen blood had ever been a dragonrider in Westeros' history. And Jon Snow looked so Northern, it was almost too much.

Jaime had heard a lot of stories over rumors about the mother of Ned Stark's bastard when Robert Baratheon had still been alive, the man had loved to dive into them and show that even his perfect honorable best friend had had flaws and weaknesses. And there had been so many theories, none of which had ever made a lot of sense to Jaime, no matter how much some people – his own sister included – believed the boy's mother to have been Ashara Dayne.

There was no Dayne in Jon Snow.

Jaime had known all three older Dayne siblings, had admired Arthur from afar and up close for so long, it just wasn't true. Ashara Dayne had been out of this world beautiful and graceful, it would just have to show in a child of hers, and Jaime also knew that the time didn't add up. He knew Ashara had been pregnant when Elia had chased her from King's Landing for her protection, and that was too long before Jon Snow had been born.

So the rumors about some tavern wench had to be true, even if it made no sense in the great picture of the loyal faithful Ned Stark, but Jaime had always known that the man wasn't perfect. 

Won in single combat against Arthur Dayne. Sure. Of course. No foul play at all.

As he stood outside of Winterfell now, watching Jon Snow watch the burning pyre while a direwolf brushed against his side and a dragonsnout rested just above a darkhaired head, that tavern wench theory was blown away all over again.

Who was this boy?

Who?

\--

The hammer fell a few hours later when Brienne and him were making their way down to the crypts after Sansa Stark had personally asked to help the siblings. The dead had come alive there, too, a grueful thought and a horrible horrible sight it must have been.

The dead bodies of those who had sought shelter and safety down here had already been carried out, now only the bones of centuries of dead Starks remained. 

The siblings had asked only those with trust to help down here and Jaime was admittedly quite surprised to have been asked, though he would help now, no questions asked.

Arya Stark was silently working with the Hound at the end of a corridor, pushing at rubble and clearing out a pathway. Sansa and Tyrion walked over to where Podrick and Tormund were already carefully setting bones to the side, Brienne followed them with a quiet sigh.

They would never be able to truly figure out which skeleton belonged into which tomb, aside from the more recent ones maybe.

Jaime rolled his shoulders through a shudder and then picked his way over to where Jon Snow was standing in front of the only untouched tomb. The only tomb in the entire crypt it seemed that wasn't broken open from within and Jaime froze when he was maybe a step or two away from the younger man because it was just then that he recognized the statue.

Well, not recognize, he had never met her.

He had seen a portrait once, a long time ago, of a young girl of no exceptional beauty but spirit in her eyes, or at least it had been painted so.

Recognizing her down here in the crypts was still easy though because she was the only woman.

Lyanna Stark.

The girl Rhaegar had kidnapped and raped. The girl Robert had longed for decades later still.

The girl Elia had pitied.

The girl Arthur, Oswell and Gerold had died holding captive.

The girl Ned Stark had killed Arthur for.

Jon Snow was staring at the face of stone, his own broken with emotions that he hadn't shown before outside, not among the men and women who had fought. Dark eyes were swimming with pain and hope and it was almost too much for Jaime to look at.

It happened when Jon Snow took a deep breath and steeled himself to go on, he turned away from Lyanna Stark's tomb and met Jaime's eyes on accident almost.

And the truth knocked the breath from Jaime's lungs.

Just for a moment, just a brief moment before Jon Snow blinked it all away, just for that brief moment Jaime saw the melancholy branded into those young bones, saw the burden of the world set upon strong shoulders, saw the burden of duty wearing a too good heart down.

Just for a brief moment, it wasn't Jon Snow who looked at him.

And it was enough.

Jaime gasped.

Realization crashed over him like the dead had last night and he got to take half a step backwards before Jon Snow's fingers curled around his wrist to keep him from doing anything.

"Don't tell anyone," Jon Snow pleaded with him, "I haven't told them yet." He nodded over to his sis... no, cousins, "We need to clean up now, everything else can come later."  
"Does she know?" Jaime wanted to know, hand falling out of Jon's grasp and the younger man's face darkened as he nodded, "I see."

Everything was making sense suddenly.

Everything.

Elia's continued silence when people had tried to get her to talk bad about her husband. The looks Ashara and her had exchanged before Ashara had left King's Landing.

"Were they married?" Jaime asked in a whisper and Jon Snow glanced back over to his mother's statue, the longing in his eyes let him look like his father again, especially now in the profile. No one had seen it, of course no, how many people were left who had known Rhaegar closer than just looks from afar, how many would recall the Prince's true nature and not the smile for the masses.

"Yes."

Rhaegar's trueborn son.

He was standing in front of Rhaegar's trueborn son while the Mad King's Daughter rested in the castle above them.

"She is too much her father's daughter to not see you as a threat now," Jaime went on when Jon looked back to him again, "You have the stronger claim. You have the people on your side. She is a conqueror, you're a protector." He made his opinion on their differences clear and Jon looked away, uncomfortable but Jaime could also see that the younger man was not not thinking along the same lines already.

"Ser Jaime..."

"Jon, be careful with her." Jaime took a little courage to be blunt with the still holding Warden of the North, he wanted his warning to get across without sounding like some reprimand of young one's naivity. Jon Snow wasn't naive, he just wanted to believe in honor too much and didn't have the venom his cousins had clearly gotten from their mother.  
"She isn't her father." Jon protested but Jaime could only smile at him in apology because there was only one response to that, and it wouldn't help the storm already raging within Rhaegar's son. How could one deal with finding out that the woman you loved was your aunt? With finding out that she turned her back on him now where she knew the truth?

"You've never met Aerys Targaryen. I served him. I know what I saw, Jon, and it won't fool me again." It wouldn't, never again, there was no wildfire in Daenerys' grasp but she had the larger dragon, something much more dangerous. "There was one major difference between Aerys and Rhaegar, one thing that set them entirely apart and I can see it being repeated again now. Aerys thought his people had a duty to serve him, Rhaegar knew he had a duty to serve his people."

"She won't stop until she has the throne." Jon gave voice to his thoughts and Jaime nodded because yes, the Queen wouldn't stop until King's Landing was either burned to the ground or she was sitting on the throne and that lack of any willingness to compromises or alternatives, that was what scared Jaime.  
"It won't win her the people." He pointed out unnecessarily and then remembered pieces of history, "Just as much as the sword wasn't the kingdom for Daemon Blackfyre, the throne won't mean the kingdom for Daenerys." 

"I can't talk about this now, there is so much to do... but... can we talk? Later? You are the only one left who... who really knew Rhaegar Targaryen even a little and I just need to know about him. I need to hear some truths about my parents." Jon asked of him and Jaime couldn't give him any truths about his mother, Lyanna Stark was probably even more of a stranger to him than she had been to the Starks but Rhaegar Targaryen was a whole other matter.

"I'd be happy to," Jaime told him and Jon nodded at him before their focus turned towards Lady Sansa and figuring out some decent way of reburying the raised Starks.

Later, falling down on a cot somewhere in the castle, Brienne already asleep next to him, Jaime changed his new goal a little.

Protect Richard Stark's grandchildren from Aerys Targaryen's daughter.

And protect the Last Dragon's Son from the Mad King's Daughter and the Mad Lannister in King's Landing.

'I couldn't save Rhaenys and Aegon, Rhaegar, but my sword will protect Jon.'

**Author's Note:**

> When inspiration strikes, I will surely write the actual "tell me about my father" conversation between Jaime and Jon.
> 
> The show really surprised me with keeping Jaime alive, something that makes me think now that Dany might truly dive deeper into the clutches of madness and then Jaime gets to kill a Mad Queen to protect the Starks this time? Or there will be some kind of other reverse mirror for a past deed by having Jaime kill a Lannister (Cersei) to protect/save a child of Rhaegar's (Jon?)
> 
> Sometimes I really do like the show.


End file.
